Heroes of the Storm PTR Notes — November 6, 2017

Our next Heroes of the Storm patch has just hit the Public Test Realm and will be available for playtesting until November 13. During this time, we kindly request your assistance in trying out the new content before we officially release the patch. Just like last time, if you encounter any bugs or other issues during your PTR play sessions, please stop by the PTR Bug Report forum to let us know about your experiences.

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General

Dragons of the Nexus Event Quest

A host of new portrait rewards are ready to swoop into your collection as our Dragons of the Nexus event takes flight! The event kicks off Tuesday, November 14, and lasts until December 12, so be sure to login and complete the quests below to start claiming your rewards.

Login Reward

Quest: Log in to Heroes of the Storm during the Dragons of the Nexus event.

Reward: Stained Glass Alexstrasza and Hanzo Portrait

3 Part Quest Chain

Play Heroes of the Storm in Versus AI, Quick Match, Ranked, or Unranked to advance quest progress. Only one part will be active at any time, and each quest must be completed in order.

Part 1: Play 5 games

Reward: Dragonqueen Alexstrasza Portrait

Part 2: Play 5 games

Reward: Dragonstrike Portrait

Part 3: Achieve 90 takedowns in winning games

Reward: Stained Glass Dragon Knight Portrait

PTR Note: While elements of this event may be visible on the Public Test Realm, any progress or rewards earned during PTR testing will not transfer to the live version of the game when this patch is officially released next week.

New Hero: Alexstrasza

Alexstrasza, the queen of dragons, was empowered by the titans to be the guardian of all life on Azeroth. She has aided mortals time and again, even at great personal cost. Now, she soars across the Nexus, protecting life wherever she finds it.

Trait

Dragonqueen

After 1.25 seconds, transform into a dragon and gain 500 Health. While Dragonqueen is active, Alexstrasza's Basic Abilities are empowered, her Basic Attacks deal 143 damage and heal allied Heroes for 43 in an arc in front of her, and the duration of incoming Slows, Roots, Blinds, and Stuns is reduced by 50%. Lasts 15 seconds.

Basic Abilities

Gift of Life (Q)

Sacrifice 15% of Alexstrasza's current Health, healing an ally for 150% of that amount.

Dragonqueen: Breath of Life cooldown greatly reduced and does not cost Health.

Abundance (W)

Plant a seed of healing that blooms after 3 seconds, healing nearby allied Heroes for 20% of their maximum Health.

Dragonqueen: Preservation heal area and amount greatly increased.

Flame Buffet (E)

Launch a fireball, Burning enemies hit for 75 damage over 5.5 seconds.Hitting enemies that are already Burning deals 125 bonus damage upon impact, Slows them by 40% decaying over 2 seconds, and refunds the Mana cost.

Dragonqueen: Wing Buffet damage and Knockback enemies in an arc.

Heroic Abilities

Life-Binder (R)

Bind Alexstrasa's life force with an allied Hero. After 2 seconds, the Hero with a lower percentage of Health is set to the same Health percentage as the other Hero..

Cleansing Flame (R)

After 1.25 seconds, take to the sky and drop fireballs at the position of your mouse cursor every 1.2 seconds for 6 seconds. Each fireball restores 300 Health to nearby allied Heroes, and deals 150 damage to nearby enemies.2 seconds after dropping all fireballs, Alexstrasza lands at the position of your mouse cursor.

Battlegrounds

​Bloodlust Brawl

All Minions, Mercs, and the Dragon Knight now have permanent Bloodlust.

Developer Comment: When looking at this Brawl, we really love the Bloodlust buff. By powering up the Players and the Dragon Knight so much, the poor Minions really struggled to provide much value during the Brawl. In order to bring them up to speed with their Mercenary buddies, we’ve decided that all Minions could use permanent Bloodlust as well.

User Interface

Volskaya Foundry objective UI will now display “Contested” text when members of both teams are actively fighting over a capture point.

Core

Notifications that indicate when the allied Core is under attack have been made more apparent.

Talent Tier Advantage Callouts

In-game chat messages will now automatically appear for all players when a team reaches levels 10 and 20 in order to more clearly indicate when one team has a Heroic Ability or Storm Talent tier advantage over the other.

A follow-up message will appear when the second team reaches levels 10 and 20 to indicate that Heroic Abilities or Storm Talents are now available to both teams.